Dream a Little Dream
by Spoongirl1
Summary: Dream worlds change but Arthur knows that two things will always be constant. There will be a fall and there will be her
1. I was only dreaming

Disclaimer: Any characters belonging to _Inception _and Christopher Nolan are of course, not mine.

A/N: So this idea was rattling around in my head almost immediately after seeing _Inception_. I know that the film hinted at a possible relationship between Arthur and Ariadne but I was more interested in the possibility that Arthur's life wasn't his work and he did know other people outside of his team, including potential romantic interests. So consider this an Arthur/OC one-shot for now, as there might be more one-shots in the same vein sometime in the future.

* * *

Arthur wasn't surprised when he arrived at his hotel room, only to find someone else already there. It was her job to know the intimate details of people's lives so she could accurately recreate them within the dream world... and besides, he never made it that hard for her to find him when she wanted to.

Casting his eyes from the sleeping figure on the bed, he toed off his shoes and shrugged out of his suit jacket, draping it over a nearby chair. Settling onto the blankets beside her, he allowed himself to watch her sleep for a few minutes, deliberately choosing to ignore the large silver case that lay between them and the rubber tubing attached to her arm.

A fragment of white poked out from between her small fingers and he gently opened her sleep-clenched fist, revealing a scrap of paper and a key attached to a brass tag. He knew the key would be some kind of clue for him because it was an old one, the kind that hotels never used anymore since they'd all moved to the fancy swipe-cards but more important right now was the note. In her inky black scrawl that was only partially legible (he never let her live down the fact that she had what Mal had once dubbed 'chicken scratch handwriting') were two words:

_Find Me_

Chuckling he picked up the key, noting the numbers stamped onto the brass tag (_725_) before lying down on the bed, so his head was resting next to hers and then picked up the second needle, tapping into his vein. Arthur closed his eyes, seemingly calm but also secretly willing time to move faster and then he felt the fall...

* * *

Opening his eyes within one of her worlds for the first time was always a bit of a head-rush because he was never sure what he would find. Sure she had her trademarks like all architects but hers were always changing, influenced by whatever caught her fancy that week. This time it was a hotel caught somewhere between 1920s Chicago and British Orientalism with red silk covered walls but lots of art deco fixtures.

Climbing the grand staircase in the centre of the lobby, he had to laugh as he looked towards the ceiling. Stairs stretched as far as the eye could see, going in every direction like an MC Escher drawing. While he was fond of paradoxical buildings, she always liked what she termed her 'labyrinths' or buildings that seemed so similar, one could spend weeks wandering the halls, passing from floor to floor without ever noticing how far they'd gone.

As Arthur reached what he had approximated was the seventh floor, he double-checked his pocket to make sure both the key and his die was still there and then closed his eyes. She'd revealed to him once that the reason why her labyrinths worked so well was because people only trusted their sight to guide them and therefore never noticed the subtle differences implanted within the dream world.

Feeling his way along the hall, he noticed a small shift from the raised silk walls to a flatter, rougher wall covering. He kept his eyes firmly shut, even though he wanted to check how far he had actually travelled as one of the rules of her game was he had to play it her way or else she would change the dream and he would be stuck wandering about until the sedatives wore off and he woke up alone and frustrated.

Suddenly the silk walls changed to what felt like firm wood beneath his fingertips and without opening his eyes, he ran his fingers up and down the door, checking for the doorknob and the small brass plate he knew would be affixed at eye level, which was stamped with the number 725.

It wasn't until Arthur had unlocked the door and closed it behind him, did he open his eyes to see her sitting on the couch like she always was. For some reason, no matter how many times the dream world changed, the room always stayed the same, looking like an exact replica of her college apartment, the location of their first and only real world tryst years earlier.

She smiled at him but didn't take her eyes from her totem, a ring of metal about the size of a silver dollar with a small hourglass filled with black sand suspended in the middle. The hourglass was currently spinning at a dizzying speed, the way it always did within the dream world. Spin it hard or soft, the hourglass would never stop spinning and never properly empty as long as she was dreaming.

"You found me quickly this time."

"Wasn't sure how much time we had."

She unfolded her legs from underneath herself and walked over to him, sliding her hands across his chest and under the collar of his jacket.

"Enough," she whispered. "We always have enough."

Arthur pulled her close then, his hands tangling in her long, red locks, his mouth tightly pressed to hers. With the way their jobs worked, it always seemed like they were functioning on a sort of half-time, where things were never entirely real and it became difficult to remember how long it had been since he'd last been here. The only thing that stayed constant though was the desire he felt for her within the dream world. Sure, in real life he was calm, collected "stick in the mud" Arthur who rarely showed really any outward emotions but here, in their world, he could feel and act however he wanted to.

She pulled away then, laughing softly as she slid his jacket from his shoulders and began loosening his tie.

"Dance with me."

Practical Arthur overtook him then, before he could stop himself.

"There's no music."

A raised eyebrow, a smirk and then the sounds of Billie Holiday's sultry voice were coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Using his now undone tie to draw him in, she began to sway to the music until he wrapped an arm around her waist and caught her free hand in his, moving them both in time to the slow rhythm.

They kissed again as he dipped her low to the floor, the arm around her waist sliding up to undo the long zipper on the back of her dress so that it slithered down to pool around her heels. She smiled and stepped out of the material before pulling him down for another kiss.

"How much time?" Arthur whispered against her lips.

"Enough."

* * *

Falling asleep within a dream was always a slightly unsettling experience for Arthur because he was never sure at first if he was waking up within the dream or waking up for real. But as his eyes opened slowly, he noticed his die was on the bedside table, directly in his eye line as if someone had left it there for him. He picked it up, sheets pooling around his waist and rolled it across the blankets. Seven. Rolled it again. Seven again. Always seven, every time.

He could still smell her perfume, but he knew she wasn't there. That was unspoken rule #2 – she always arrived in the dream world before him and left before he did. He knew that people, his teammates and hers always wondered why if they took time out to have these dream rendezvous' with each other, they never acted upon their feelings in the real world. They had both been there though when Mal was still around, seen what existing together simultaneously in the dream and real life had done to Mal and Cobbs and sworn that no matter how much they wanted each other, they could only have it one of two ways. And since they spent more time working together within a dream, it was easier to have their relationship there and exist only as friends in the real world.

Arthur would never tell her how much this existence was killing him though. His fantasies in real life were rarely sexual in nature but they always deviated to something about her that he wasn't allowed to touch, like how he would often wonder what her hair felt like in the real world or if her skin was just as soft and unblemished. He could touch her, take her, do almost anything he wanted here but somehow even the slightest brush of a hand or smallest kiss was completely taboo outside of the dream.

Lying back against the rumpled sheets, he rolled his die around in his hand, feeling its familiar weight and wondering when the sedatives were going to wear off. Just then, he heard the familiar tones of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" emanating from a faraway place. Closing his eyes, he steeled himself for the reality of waking up alone in a hotel room, suit rumpled and mouth dry. 3 2 1 and then the fall...

* * *

Before Arthur opened his eyes, he realized there was something different about this awakening. The room was quiet like always, but this time there was a familiar warm weight pressing down on him. His heart did a double-beat but he was still hesitant to properly open his eyes, in case he was imagining this too.

A pair of small hands slid the headphones off his ears and then he felt a puff of warm air against his neck and the slightest brush of lips, as the person lying on him bent down to whisper in his ear.

"Time again, sleeping beauty."

Cracking one eye open, he found himself staring into a pair of laughing gray eyes, a curtain of long red locks surrounding them as she bent over him.

He reached up, twisting one of the long strands between his fingers. As much as he could check his pocket for his die right now, the feeling of her hair was enough to tell him he wasn't still dreaming as it always felt like pure silk in the dream world while here it was still smooth but a little more twisted and rumpled from sleep. Still he had to ask...

"Am I still dreaming?"

Putting a thoughtful finger to her lips, she fished around in the pocket of her skirt and pulled out her totem. Giving it a lazy flick, the small hourglass spun around one-twice-three times before stopping, all the sand slowly pouring from one end to the other.

"Guess not."

"Then why?"

She sighed, her cupid's bow lips twisting up in a small frown. "Guess I got tired of the having it one way but not the other. I'm selfish..."

"But I thought we agreed-"

She pushed herself back and made a motion to climb off the bed. "I can go. I'm sorry, this was a stupid idea-"

He pulled her down again, rolling them over so she was trapped underneath him, pinned between his arms.

"It's not stupid, Nick. I just wasn't sure what changed your mind."

Nick, _his _Nick he realized, shrugged and tangled her fingers in his tie. "I dunno. I guess maybe I keep feeling like I spend all my days in a world of what-ifs and maybes to the point where I sometimes forget what's real. And then I was thinking I should have something concrete, something more important than my totem to remind me that I'm still dreaming and the one thing I could think of that was concrete was this – a relationship – but my only proper relationship is still inside a maybe-world so what if it's just a maybe-dream too and then I don't really know what's real or not –"

Arthur cut her rambling monologue off by pressing a small kiss to her lips and then working his way over to her neck, where he could feel her pulse thumping underneath his mouth.

"This is real, Nick. The bed, the room, all of it could be a dream right now but you and me? We're real."

She smiled and pulled him into a deeper, proper kiss.

"Better than any totem," he heard her mumble softly.

* * *

A/N: So that was my first attempt at writing an _Inception_ fic. Hopefully if you've read this far, you enjoyed it and you didn't mind me shipping Arthur with an OC instead of Ariadne or Eames. I have some more ideas about Nick and Arthur but I don't think it'll ever be a proper story as I seem to be kind of terrible at writing those lately, so it'll probably be more tenuously connected one-shots which I hope people will also enjoy.


	2. The Warehouse

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or concepts from _Inception _as they belong to Christopher Nolan.

A/N: Thanks for all the amazing reviews for the first one-shot. I know some people suggested that I leave that as a one-shot and turn the idea into a full story but since I'm a full-time university student, maintaining a chaptered, detailed story is difficult so for the meantime I'm going to continue posting one-shots but I do have a number planned out and they're going to be in (mostly) chronological order so it will be like an almost-complete chaptered story.

Also for those who were wondering a little more about Nick, WhatsGoingOn suggested that she seemed a little like Emma Stone which I didn't realize at the time, but now I'm cluing in that I kind of subconsciously (haha) patterned her after Emma Stone in _Zombieland_. So if you'd like more a visual of Nick, just look up pictures of Emma Stone as Wichita and it's a pretty close match. Thanks to WhatsGoingOn for the suggestion.

* * *

No matter how fuzzy the rest of his memories get, Arthur can always remember the day he met Nick. Well that's probably because that was the day he met _everyone_ and was first introduced to the concept of extraction, but he knew it always brought a smile to her face that he could pinpoint the exact date when they were first introduced.

He'd been doing his final year of undergrad at Yale - a Mechanical Engineering Degree but he'd been registered in a Philosophy class to fulfill some stupid degree requirement. His professor though had been fascinating, an older British man who seemed to have the ability to make the theories he discussed seem almost tangibly real. Professor Miles Gough who later Arthur would learn was also the proverbial gatekeeper to all the secrets of extraction.

He'd been rather surprised when the professor had pulled him aside after class one day and asked if he would be interested in helping with an experiment that he was conducting. Arthur wasn't sure what kind of experiments professors of Philosophy could be involved in, but his curiosity overtook him and he found himself agreeing to meet the professor the following day.

* * *

The location the professor asked him to come to turned out to not be on campus but rather a small industrial warehouse in downtown New Haven. Temporary walls and platforms had been set up within the larger space, giving it the feeling of a crude maze constructed by a child.

Finally at what he guessed was near the centre of the warehouse, he found the professor with three other people who were sitting on dilapidated pieces of furniture, watching a fourth figure who was in a straight-back wooden chair, their back to him.

"Ah, Arthur. Welcome."

He was quickly introduced to the other participants as the professor termed them, in quick succession - Mallorie or Mal Gough, a pretty brunette who was the professor's daughter, Ilya Baskov, a huge beast of a man from Russia and Dominic Cobb, a rugged blonde man who was Mal's fiancée.

"And this is Nikola Evans. She's our youngest participant but is already proving to be quite talented."

The petite redhead did not move when the professor laid his hands upon her shoulders, in fact she didn't even seem to be aware of anyone's presence in the room. Her eyes remained closed, with her posture stick straight, hands resting on her knees, her legs drawn up in the lotus position.

The professor glanced at a stopwatch that was hanging from the back of the chair and then looked down at the girl again.

"Time for the kick, I should think. Arthur, you'll want to stand back a little."

Mal moved to girl's side and checked on the tubing that Arthur just noticed was snaking from the girls arm down into a silver briefcase on the floor. Straightening up, she placed a hand against the back of the chair and gave it a shove, so it tilted back towards the floor.

Arthur was about to step forward to do something, what he wasn't entirely sure but something, when he felt a hand holding him back. It was the other man, Cobb who was watching the scene with an intense look on his face.

"Wait."

Seconds before the chair and its occupant slammed into the floor, Ilya reached out, slowing the descent so the girl was left suspended at a parallel angle with the hard concrete. Grey eyes snapped open and the girl sat up abruptly, knocking over the chair in the process.

"Asshole" she frowned, smacking Ilya on the bicep.

The big man laughed, lifting her off the floor with one meaty arm, righting the chair with the other.

"I told you I'd catch you."

"You didn't have to take so long though."

The professor cleared his throat, the small sound echoing through the warehouse, instantly ceasing the bickering between the two participants.

"Nick, I'd like to introduce you to Arthur. Arthur, Nick is our architect."

What the professor meant by architect Arthur wasn't sure, but it didn't matter right now, as Nick was taking his hand in her small one, shaking it with the slightest smile on her face.

"Nice to meet you."

* * *

Arthur wasn't sure how long they'd sat at the coffee shop but he was too interested to bother checking his watch. Cobb has come with them initially to explain the finer points of extraction to Arthur, but he'd left some time ago, leaving the two youngest participants to discuss everything and anything that came to mind.

Through their conversations, Arthur had found out that Nick was 17 which made her four years younger than him, was an only child to a professor and a stay-at home mother, attended a private girl's school and was named for Nikola Tesla.

"So where are you going to school next year?"

She stirred the dregs of her tea leaves around, creating swirls in the muddy brown at the bottom of the cup. "Dunno. Yale maybe, maybe somewhere else. I think I want to study Architecture or maybe Psychology, who knows?"

"So how did you get into this?"

"My dad lets me audit classes sometimes and Professor Gough guest-lectured in one of his and I asked so many questions during the lecture that afterwards he asked if I'd like to help with an experiment. My parents think I'm doing some sort of serious psychology stuff that will look good on college applications."

Arthur took another sip of his coffee which was a little too sweet for his liking and swallowed before speaking again.

"So what's it like?"

"What's what like?"

"The dream world that Cobb was talking about. What's it like?"

Nick shrugged, pushing her long hair behind her ears. "You tell me."

"What?"

She leaned forward, close enough to kiss but then whispered into his ear. "Tell me how we got here."

"Well we left the warehouse and then went down the road and then..." A frown creased his forehead as he struggled to remember how they'd wound up at this particular coffee shop.

Suddenly he felt the sensation of several eyes upon him and turned around, realizing that all the customers and staff of the shop were staring at him. Turning back to Nick, he saw that she'd set a small circle of metal on the table between them.

"Nick, what's going on?"

She smiled, moving back from him and picking up the metal circle.

"You know how in a dream, you frequently know where you are but can never quite remember how you got there? Like you dream that you're at home and suddenly you're in China and you know you're in China but you can't remember how you wound up there or even sometimes where you were before that?"

She touched one finger to the hourglass in the middle of the circle and suddenly it was spinning wildly on its axis, black sand flying in all directions.

"So wait, we're dreaming right now?"

"Maybe."

"Whose dream is this then?"

"Well I built the world but this is your subconscious, so by Miles' logic, you're the dreamer. Wanna take a look?"

They passed out of the coffee shop and began walking down the road. Instead of the apartment buildings and pavement that Arthur thought he remembered when they arrived, the streets were made of stone and the buildings were red brick and iron like something out of a history book.

"So you designed all this? Where are we?"

A smile tugged on Nick's lips as she looked at her creation.

"Rule #1 - Never design an actual place within the dream. You can draw inspiration from places but you should never directly recreate them. At least that's what Cobb says."

"So what are you inspired by?"

"Victorian England, I think. The world I was building in my dream though was more like a bizarro Las Vegas. All places I've always wanted to go, I guess."

Nick kept walking but Arthur stopped her by putting his hands on her shoulders and turning her to face him.

"So this whole time, I've been asleep though? This isn't real at all?"

Before Nick could reply, a fissure opened up in the road, snaking its way towards them. When Arthur looked up he realized the sky had gone cloudy and more cracks were appearing on the buildings around them.

"Nick, what's happening?"

She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, twisting a strand of hair around her finger, her other hand playing with the hourglass. Frustrated Arthur pulled her hand away and turned her face towards his, forcing her to look at him.

"Nick, what is it?"

"Cobb warned me this could happen. If the dreamer knows that they are dreaming, the more aware they become, the more their subconscious starts to destroy the dream world. And since you've figured out you're dreaming right now -"

Before she could finish her explanation though, the world tilted sharply and then Arthur had the distinct feeling that he was falling.

* * *

Opening his eyes, he realized he was lying on a plastic lounge chair in the warehouse, a needle and tubing protruding from his arm. Next to him, Nick was curled up into a large armchair, her head practically resting on the armrest, the same tubing emerging from her wrist.

Ilya leaned over him suddenly, his fingers on his throat, to check his pulse Arthur guessed and he was pulling the tubing from his arm (none too gently Arthur noted with a grimace) before repeating the same motions on Nick.

Arthur tried to get up but the bigger man pushed him back into the chair with one beefy hand.

"Sit," he rumbled. "Get your head together first."

Arthur leaned back against the plastic strips on the chair and stared at the ceiling. When he glanced down, he realized Nick had shifted her position so her arms were pillowed on the armrest, with her head resting against them, grey eyes watching him carefully.

"Are we still dreaming?" he asked, but it came out barely louder than a whisper as he realized his mouth felt dry and rough like sandpaper.

She pressed her lips together and then pulled the same hourglass he'd seen in the dream from her sweater pocket. Holding it up, she gently spun the small glass, causing it to rotate a few times before it stopped.

"Guess not."

Letting out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding, Arthur relaxed against the plastic slats and stared at the ceiling again. "How long until we go back?"

* * *

A/N: So hope you all enjoyed part deux of Dream a Little Dream. I was trying not to be too similar to Ariadne's introduction to the dream world but I figured that maybe it was easiest to introduce everyone to the dream world in a similar fashion. The next fic will take a bit of a jump into the future, about a year, where Arthur has already been practicing in the dream world for some time, but hasn't had a chance to perform an Extraction himself. It'll be a two-parter with the second part being a little more... scandalous if you get my drift. So let me know if you'd like the second part to be T-rated, sort 'duh-dun-dun-duh' fade to black pseudo-scandalous or proper M-rated, hello details scandalous and I'll do my best to match what the majority of people would like to see.


	3. Dragged You Down Below

Disclaimer: Concepts/Characters related to _Inception_ are not mine but rather Christopher Nolan's. I'm just 'extracting' them for my own purposes

A/N: Part 3... Whoo. I know the last chapter lost the tone a little bit but that's mostly because I was 1) writing it at work on Google Docs which meant my focus wasn't 100% on the story and 2) because I`m still getting a feel for how to write the 'real world' versus the 'dream world'. But hopefully I've got it worked out this time around.

Notes for this one-shot: This is about a year, a year and a half after the second (The Warehouse) one-shot, so Arthur is about 23 and Nick is around 19. They've both had the chance to be involved in extractions as the architect and the point-man but they've never done one without someone more experienced being involved.

* * *

Arthur rocked back on the heels of his oxfords as he checked the time again. It had become a new habit of his, this fixation on how time moved inside of the world of dream and outside it. Mal teased that it was part of his obsession with Cobb, as the older man – his mentor really, was equally fixated on tracking the movements of time.

She'd started joking about the obsession when he'd arrived at the warehouse with closely cropped hair to replace the shaggy, messy look he'd worn through most of university. The teasing had only continued when he'd ditched his wardrobe of jeans and t-shirts for more classic suits and button-downs. Arthur personally didn't think he had any sort of obsession with Dom; he was just taking subtle cues from the older man on how to pass by unnoticed in the dream world.

His attention to detail was also growing sharper as it was his job on the team to learn all the aspects of their mark's live, research every facet but also keep an eye for anything that changed while they were in the dream. That was why as he stood in front of Nick's apartment door, his eyes were drawn to several spots where it was obvious that the green paint had chipped off and been painted over again, in addition to the fact that the brass 7 was hanging on an angle and one of the lights further down the hall was burning out, flickering slightly every few seconds.

Arthur knocked again and then waited his hands in his pockets, idly running his fingers over his die.

"It's open."

The inside of Nick's apartment was much more reflective of its occupant than the dilapidated outside. The walls were covered in huge pieces of paper with black charcoal markings all over them and there were multiple bookshelves stuffed with all manner of architectural planning texts as well as several coffee table books of photographs of exotic locations. The furniture was minimal, a table, a couch and beyond an archway, a large brass bed that was currently piled with clothes.

Nick poked her head around the archway with a slight smile.

"Sorry, I'll be ready in like two minutes. Do you ever have those days where you completely forget about doing your laundry until you wake up one morning and you have no clothes?"

Arthur cleared his throat and rocked back onto his heels again.

"Uh, not really, no."

"Oh okay. Well give me a minute and I'll get dressed. You have to close your eyes though."

"Why?"

"No doors."

Obligingly he shut his eyes but when he heard her move around, he opened them a fraction, a small smirk on his lips.

Nick pulled her oversized shirt off, revealing a small black tattoo between her shoulder blades before she grabbed a bra and a shirt. Boxers were slid down slim legs, revealing the top of a pale but curved backside, when suddenly he was smacked in the face with a wad of material.

"I said NO peeking. Jesus."

* * *

Their mark was already sedated and handcuffed down when they reached the main room of the warehouse. Charles Dahl, a prominent businessman who had made his fortune off of buying media conglomerates until he had his own billion dollar media empire. His ex-wife's lawyers were paying them to go into his mind and find the name of the law firm who had suddenly made a prenup appear out of thin air, despite the ex-wife's insistence that she had never signed one. It was a simple extraction, just one dream which was why Dom and Mal were trusting him and Nick to go in by themselves and get the information.

He would be working as the extractor, under the guise of a contractor who had been hired to help Mr. Dahl with his security while Nick, posing as his partner would be doing the duel job of architect and point-man. The setting was a restaurant that was patterned after Mr. Dahl's favourite steak house, so as to feel familiar for the mark without requiring an exact copy of the real restaurant.

Rolling up the sleeve of his shirt, he made himself comfortable as Dom prepped the needles.

"Remember what I've told you," the older man reminded him. "You can be hurt within the dream, but dying will just wake you up, alright?"

"Yeah, I've got it."

"Good. You've got 20 minutes."

Arthur closed his eyes and then suddenly as the drugs hit his system, he felt that now-familiar falling sensation...

* * *

Charles Dahl was an imposing man in his sixties, tall with closely cropped silver hair and beard. The reddish tint in his nose and cheeks suggested he was no stranger to alcohol and the appraising look he had given Nick when they 'arrived' at the restaurant implied that he was also fond of younger women.

Nick was dressed in a steel grey dress under a black blazer with her hair swept back into a loose bun and a pair of serious looking glasses perched on her nose. She was currently playing to Dahl's ego, regarding his need to protect himself as Arthur calmly sipped the wine that Dahl had chosen.

"My partner is quite correct, Mr. Dahl. In times like this, one can't be too careful with ones security."

"Well I have bodyguards for that sort of thing."

Arthur nodded, his gaze focused. Dahl liked men who were willing to challenge him, so in order to get what they came for, Arthur had had to create a persona of a strong salesman who not only knew his pitch by heart, but lived, breathed and slept every angle of it.

"What we specialize in, Mr. Dahl is not physical security as anyone can hire a bodyguard. What we protect against are people who might try to enter your mind and take information they can then use against you."

"They can do that?"

"Yes sir. It's a process called extraction. What we can teach you to do is create security measures within your own mind, like a safe or vault where you would store the information so the extractors couldn't access it."

"Extractors like yourself maybe?"

Arthur's eyes widened slightly as he sucked in a deep breath but he tried not to show any outward signs of distress, in case it interrupted the dream.

"Like us, sir?"

Dahl set his napkin down and pushed himself back from the table. "I am not a stupid man, Mr. Wallace. After I was hit with a lawsuit regarding an incident that no one but myself and the defendant could corroborate, I took extra precautions to protect myself from future situations. Now I don't know what you could be looking for in here, but I can assure you that you won't get it."

He snapped his fingers and suddenly several more security guards appeared in the room. Before Arthur could move, two of the security guards stepped forwards and pulled Nick from her seat.

"I wonder what the people who trained you told you about being hurt in a dream. You know pain originates in the mind so if I were to do something like this –" Dahl gestured again and another guard pulled out his gun, levelling it at Nick. Arthur tried to get up but found himself restrained in his seat. There was a blast, a small muzzle flare and then Nick slumped to the floor, clutching her shoulder. "It hurts just as badly as it would in real life. Now Mr. Wallace, would you like to tell me who you're working for or do I have to show you all the ways I can hurt your pretty partner without killing her?"

If his heart wasn't beating too quickly for him to even think clearly, Arthur would have laughed at how much Dahl was sounding like a terrible Bond villain.

_No Mr. Bond_, _I expect you to die_, he thought. Oh God he really was losing it if he was thinking of old Bond lines, in a time like this.

The sounds of a scuffle brought his attention back to the current situation and he realized that Nick, although still bleeding, had managed to wrestle one of the guard's guns away and was currently pointing it at her own temple.

Dahl laughed and then pulled out a small stiletto, slamming Arthur's head down onto the table and applying pressure with the knife to the back of his neck.

"Go ahead, Ms. Evans. Kill yourself and leave your partner behind. That way you don't have to hear him scream."

The gun wavered in her hand and Arthur realized small cracks were appearing through the walls as she began to lose control of the dream.

"I'm sorry, Arthur."

There was another short bang and then searing pain emanating from his head, before everything suddenly went dark and he felt the kick.

* * *

When Arthur came to, he almost fell out of his seat but Dom held him back, trying to steady him. He heard odd choking noises and he couldn't figure out where they were coming from, until he realized that they were emerging from his own throat.

"Arthur, Jesus, what happened?"

Looking wildly around the room, he saw that Nick was still hooked into the dream, her face tense. Lurching from his seat, he stumbled over to her and tried to unhook the needle but found himself thrown flat on his back on the concrete, Dom pinning him down.

"Never interrupt a dream without a proper kick, do you hear me? We don't know what kind of damage it can cause the mind if someone is interrupted without any warning. Now tell me, what the hell is going on?"

Arthur gasped and coughed but finally managed to spit out some semblance of an explanation.

"Dahl knew. He had training of some kind... he said he was going to keep us there, hurt us until we told him who hired us. He knew not to kill us or disrupt the dream or else we'd wake up-"

"How did you get out before the kick then?"

"Nick... s-she got a gun. She shot me... oh God, she shot me in the head."

Dom glanced at Nick's still sleeping form before calling out for Mal.

"We have to do the kick now."

"But it's not time yet."

"Something went wrong. She needs to be pulled out."

Arthur lay on the floor, feeling like his bones were made of wet noodles as Mal and Dom applied the kick and Nick fell to the floor, sobbing and coughing. Mal was by her side though and he watched Nick whisper something to Mal, who got up and fetched her black sketchbook that she used to plan the layouts of dreams. Nick scribbled something onto one of the pages before her face turned pale and she stumbled to her feet, running into the small bathroom at the back of the warehouse. Mal passed the sketchbook to Dom before sliding her arms under Arthur and helping him to his feet. She half-carried, half-led him over to the one couch in the room where he collapsed onto the worn flannel, his face pressed against the cushions.

Eyes sliding shut, Arthur slipped into a dark sleep full of strange dreams that he could never properly recall afterwards. When he woke up, he knew some time must have passed because Dahl was gone as were Mal and Dom and Ilya who'd be out on another contract was sitting at the single desk, feet kicked up as he flicked through a tattoo magazine.

Arthur pushed himself up but only succeeded in sliding to the floor, where he sat for a minute, trying not to move as strange phantom pains chased around inside his head.

"Good, you're up."

Ilya set the magazine down and pulled a small flashlight out of his pocket, as he knelt in front of Arthur. Temporarily blinded, Arthur rubbed the spots out of his eyes as Ilya finished his examination and returned to his magazine, apparently deciding that Arthur was in fine health.

"How long was I asleep for?"

"Two – two and a half hours about."

"Mal and Dom left?"

"They took Dahl back and went to give the information to the former Mrs. Dahl's lawyers."

"Nick got the information?" Then it dawned on him that he hadn't seen Nick since he'd fallen asleep. The phantom pain screamed as he shot to his feet, but he was too busy looking around the space for Nick to pay any attention to it.

Ilya jerked his thumb at the bathroom door which was still shut. "She got it. Been in there the whole time, won't come out."

Arthur made it to the bathroom on shaky legs and leaned against cracked wooden frame, his head resting against the door.

"Nick? Nick, it's Arthur. Are you okay?"

There was what sounded like a cut-off sob and then the splash of water.

"I'm fine. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine now. We should get out of here though. D'you want to go grab some food with me?"

"N-no, I'm fine. I've got some schoolwork to do anyways."

"Alright. Uh I guess I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Uh-huh. Good night, Arthur."

The good night sounded very definitive so Arthur pushed himself off the door and headed towards the exit. He was going to go home, change and then go find a cheap bar and drink until he could pass out and hopefully not dream that night. It was his emergency solution to a bad extraction and he knew that tonight he would definitely need it.

* * *

A/N: So reminder time. The next part will be a continuation of this one-shot (effectively making this a two-shot) and you get to pick whether it will be M or T. So let me know.


	4. For the Ghosts in the Halls

Disclaimer: All but OCs are property of Christopher Nolan

A/N: Thank you so much for all the reviews. Sorry this took a little time, I got a bit distracted by the Inception_Kink meme and then was away for the weekend, so not a whole lot of time to write in. I'm sort of in the mood for more fluff and less... well, you know so this is still T-Rated but if you'd like the M-Rated version, tell me in a review and I'll see what I can do

* * *

By the time Arthur had gotten back to the small apartment he was renting and changed from his suit into an old sweater and black jeans, the tremors that spasmodically rattled through his body had stopped but he still felt a phantom pain between his eyes and his mouth was still very dry.

It was the first time he had died within the dream world, he realized. He'd never been caught by the dreamer's subconscious before or been forced to shoot himself to escape a dream that was breaking apart. It was always the kick that woke him up, every time. Cobb had warned him almost every time he'd gone under that he could die but somehow it had just never happened before this night.

Letting out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, Arthur tried to work out if the shaking and constant twitchy nervousness he was feeling was really because it was the first time he'd died, with a shot to the head no less or because he was worried about Nick and what had happened to her in the time between his 'death' and her kick.

A fine misty rain had started up as he quickly jogged to the bar down the street from his building. The place was a relic from the 70s, neon lights, vinyl and all but the service was good and the booze was cheap and Arthur knew that was all he needed that night. When he ducked inside though, his sweater clinging to him in the damp, he noticed an extra patron amongst the older business men who came on a nightly basis.

Nick was sitting at the corner of the bar, her back to the wall and three empty stools beside her. Like him, she'd changed her outfit but if possible, she'd added on even more layers of raggedy black, an oversized cardigan and a scarf thrown over the black tunic and leggings she'd been wearing earlier in the day. Her hands were wrapped around a cut glass tumbler full of amber liquid and she was staring into the drink like it held some sort of secret she needed the answer to.

Arthur gestured to the bartender and then slid onto the stool next to Nick, who barely seemed to notice the world around her, much less his presence.

"What secrets is it telling you?"

She looked up suddenly, worry and then confusion flickering over her features. "Arthur-"

"I thought you had homework to do."

Nick unwrapped one delicate hand from the tumbler and held it up, so he could see it was trembling slightly. "I was but then this kept happening and screwing up my work. So I figured I would go out and drink until my hands stopped shaking or they started shaking for a completely different reason. I didn't think you'd be the kind of person to frequent places like this though?"

Arthur shrugged, pausing to take a sip of the whiskey he'd ordered. It burned his throat but sent a calming warmth through the nervous feelings in his stomach, so he knew it would be worth the hangover the next day. "Same reason almost. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight, so why not go drink, until I can pass out and not dream?"

Nick stared into her drink again, looking like she was on the verge of tears. "I'm really sorry, Arthur. I didn't mean for that to happen, especially the shooting part. I-if I'd just kept better control over the dream –"

Later Arthur could never explain why he decided to do what he did, particularly with him never being a very physical person, but for some unexplained reason, he found himself sliding an arm around Nick so she was leaning against him, their heads close together.

"Nick, I don't blame you. You were trying to protect me... and besides, even if you'd kept control of the dream, he still probably would have known. Cobb told me before that some people have had training against extractors like us so if anyone screwed up, it was me because I should have found that out, okay?"

Nick nodded and let out a shaky breath, then smiled slightly, running her fingers over the edge of her glass. "I think a situation like this calls for drinking until we don't know what day it is anymore."

Arthur tipped his glass against hers and smiled back. "Agreed."

* * *

Arthur wasn't sure how they'd gotten from the bar to Nick's apartment but he did vaguely recall offering at some point in the evening to walk her home, because her neighbourhood wasn't the best place to be, intoxicated and late at night.

He dropped his head against his arm, which was currently resting against the doorframe as Nick dug around through the large ring of keys she carried, drunkenly trying to locate the one that would open her front door. Finally with a small cry of triumph, she produced a brass skeleton key that slid easily into the lock.

"Well seeing as how you got your door unlocked, guess I should be heading home too."

Nick turned so her back was against the door, her body bracketed on either side by his arms. "Arthur?'

"Mmm?"

A hand curled around the collar of his sweater and then he felt the faintest brush of lips against his neck.

"Thank you."

At that moment, Arthur made the second decision of the night that he would never be able to explain to anyone later. Even though he'd known Nick for a year and yes, she was pretty, he'd never really found himself thinking of her in a sexually attractive way. But for some reason, he had her pressed against the door, one hand tangled in her hair, the other resting above her head, their lips locked tightly together.

Nick tilted her head back, pulling him closer and then hesitantly opened her mouth, tongue flicking over his bottom lip. Arthur kissed back before shifting to lick over her pulse point.

"Arth-Arthur, we shouldn't..."

Arthur pulled back, instantly feeling like a complete tool for taking advantage of Nick's decidedly inebriated state. "Shit, I'm sorry Nick-"

Before he could finish his apologies and bolt, Nick pressed a hand over his mouth and pulled him close again. "I meant we shouldn't be doing this in the hallway... my neighbour is an incredibly Catholic grandmother and I don't want to be the one to give her a heart attack. Bu-but I still want to... that is, if you want to-"

Arthur quickly ran through his list of mental arguments about why doing this, with Nick, while drunk was a bad idea before he leaned down and kissed her deeply. "Absolutely."

* * *

The bright light lancing through the curtains and past his closed eyes was what woke Arthur the following morning. For a minute, he thought he had made it back to his own apartment, until he realized he was lying on a King-sized bed, not a Queen and it was covered with a thick wool blanket, not his clean, cotton duvet.

As he slowly looked around the room, he saw a familiar hourglass hanging from a corner poster of the bed. Suddenly everything from the night before came back to him and his headache throbbed as he recalled his split-second decision to sleep with Nick.

_Oh that was bad_, he thought_ Very bad Arthur. How are you going to explain this to the rest of the team? Or Nick? What if she regrets it?_

Rolling onto his side, he saw a glass of water and a bottle of Aspirin had been left on the table beside the bed for him. Underneath the glass was a note, quickly scratched out on a piece of notebook paper.

_Arthur_, the note read. _Sorry to leave you asleep and all... this undiscussed but Cobb called and wanted to debrief on what happened yesterday. I told him you'd be in later. I really hope we can talk about this and things aren't really awkward for you now. Nick_

Arthur crumpled the note up and fell back against the pillows. _Bad Arthur, very, very, very bad Arthur._


End file.
